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ISLAMABAD, March 29 (Reuters) - Pakistani religious schools are training militants and supporting violent Islamist groups while government efforts to reform the seminaries are in a shambles, a security think-tank said on Thursday.

President Pervez Musharraf announced controls on the schools in 2002 but the seminaries, known as madrasas, had in fact thrived because of the government's dependence on religious parties, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said.

The Brussels-based group said in a report focusing on Karachi that madrasas in Pakistan's biggest city had trained and dispatched "jihadi", or holy war, fighters to Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir.

"The government's inaction has allowed well-financed networks of madrasas, sectarian parties, and militant groups to flourish in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan," said Samina Ahmad, the group's South Asia Project Director.

The report was released as authorities in Islamabad were confronting pro-Taliban clerics and their female madrasa students after the students abducted women in a raid on a suspected brothel as part of a private anti-vice drive.

The ICG said because of government failure to regulate madrasas, it was impossible to know how many there were in Karachi and the country as a whole.

The government has said there are 13,000 madrasas nationwide but the think-tank said well-founded estimates put the number at about 20,000. Despite bans and restrictions, an unknown number of foreign students were enrolled at the schools.

Not all madrasas were active centres of jihadi militancy but even those without direct links to violence promoted an ideology that provided religious justification for it, the group said.

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Exploiting Karachi's rapid, unregulated urbanisation and its masses of young, disaffected and impoverished citizens, the madrasa sector had grown at an explosive rate, it said.

The madrasas had contributed to a climate of lawlessness through illegal land encroachment, violent clashes between rival militant groups and calls for sectarian and militant violence.

Madrasas are funded through collections or from donations from abroad or from big business and even multinationals in Pakistan. Some rent out space for shops, often on illegally occupied state land, the ICG said.

Musharraf, a major U.S. ally, issued a madrasa reform agenda in January 2002, vowing to regulate the schools, modernise their curricula, and shut down any found involved in militancy.

But the ICG said the reform programme was "in shambles" and periodic declarations of tough action, made in response to international events and pressure, were invariably followed by retreat.

The main reason for the half-hearted effort was Musharraf's dependence on the religious right, the group said.

"Exploiting the military government's weakness, the religious parties and madrasa unions have countered all attempts to regulate the madrasa sector," it said.

"By backtracking, the government has further emboldened sectarian and extremist forces." it said.

"The international community needs to press President Musharraf to fulfil his commitments, in particular to enforce genuine controls on the madrasas and allow free and fair national elections in 2007."

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